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Gaston
Gaston is a narcissistic, cunning, chauvinistic, deceptive, manipulative, and arrogant hunter from Belle's village who was after Belle's hand in marriage by any means necessary. Gaston is strong and handsome, and exploited these traits to the fullest. While it is not clear if he considers himself as a good person or not (like Ratcliffe and Judge Claude Frollo do), the villiagers very much do, considering how popular he is with them (especially the Bimbette triplets), and seem unaware of his true nature (Gaston reprise in the original film notwithstanding), and this serves to fuel his already massive ego — a narcissist who sees himself as superior to everyone around him. Gaston is proud, boorish, uncultured, impolite, and sexist. He was also arrogant, as evidenced by his setting up a wedding before he even proposed to Belle under the expectation that she'd approve of becoming his wife. He was also convinced that he is powerful enough to defeat the bigger and stronger Beast by himself. He even taunts the Beast, wanting him to fight back as he wants to prove that he can kill him in a fair fight. However, his arrogance makes him underestimate his opponent and once he realizes his life is on the line, he may have to rely on desperate measures to survive. Despite this, he was not arrogant enough to believe there was no risk to being killed by the Beast, as he freely admits that fighting the Beast does have the likelihood that he or the other villagers might very likely die during the "Mob Song". Despite his belief that thinking is "a dangerous pastime" (suggesting that he is anti-intellectual), Gaston is not unintelligent; in fact, he is quite cunning, which is emphasized twice in the story; he comes up with a plan to get Belle to marry him by threatening to have her father, Maurice, thrown into an asylum should she refuse. When that plan is foiled by Belle showing the Beast with a magic mirror, Gaston simply improvises and quickly turns the tables by manipulating the villagers into forming a mob to kill the Beast, thus eliminating his competition. Gaston is not above using underhanded tactics, which had earlier been implied with LeFou's claim about Gaston being "slick" as well as Gaston's admission about being good at "taking cheap shots", and confirmed when he shows himself to literally be a backstabber in his final moments, showing that he also cheats at things. In fact, his "begging" to the Beast may have been nothing more than a trick: he still had a knife on his person, and if the Beast was as "kind and gentle" as Belle described him to be, then Gaston would've appealed to his enemy's better nature, thus allowing him to be brought back on solid ground before he could get one last shot. Personality Gaston's view of women is extremely sexist, and while he appears charming to all of the other women of the village, such as the Bimbettes (who, being products of an upbringing in the village, grew-up to see nothing wrong with Gaston's behavior, completely mesmerized by his handsome face), Belle is the only woman in the entire town to be able to see him for what he really is from the start of the film on. He believes that women should not be able to think for themselves or even get ideas, and even stamps Belle's book into the mud in an attempt to get her to focus on "more important things" (namely, himself). Because of this, Gaston's attempts to charm Belle always fall flat because of his chauvinistic and boorish behavior. His sexism is also shown by the fact that he does not seem to even consider the possibility of fathering any daughters, as he states he wants "six or seven strapping boys" like himself. Gaston suffers from obsessive love which is shown by his intense infatuation with Belle. Indeed, he is so obsessed with her that he ignores all the other pretty women in the village who would be happy to be his "little wife", even ironically, those who technically matched Gaston's standards of how women should behave. When Gaston is singing about wanting to marry her in the opening song, he says "When I met her, saw her, I said she's gorgeous and I fell", implying that he fell in love for Belle at first sight. The Marvel Comics serial likewise strongly implied that he had feelings for Belle since they were children. These facts imply that another reason for his relentless pursuit of Belle is to satisfy his pride which may have have hurt by her resistance to him. Gaston is also adulterous (at least in the musical), as he states to Claudia and her sisters that his "rendezvouses" with the girls will continue after he marries Belle, which makes it clear that he does not know or care that marriage is a one-woman commitment or that is it supposed to be based on love and affection rather than ownership of property. Notably, at the start of the film and musical play, Gaston did not seem truly evil. Rather, he was simply conceited, male-chauvinistic, boorish and rude than a true villain, but as time goes on his pride and obsession with Belle becomes so intense that it turns him into a twisted, sadistic and murderous monster. His speech to get the mob to kill the Beast in order to protect the village is nothing more than a ploy to get them to help him infiltrate the castle. Gaston does not care about the village very much, even if he genuinely does believe that the Beast is a threat. All he wants is to kill his rival so he can have Belle as his property. By the time of his death, Gaston feels that if he can't have Belle, nobody can. In an earlier version of the story, he was even going to commit suicide after killing the Beast as he knew that no matter what he did, Belle would never love him. Category:Sociopaths Category:Big Bad Category:Lawful Evil Category:Power-Hungry Category:Master Manipulator Category:Murderous Villains Category:The Heavy Category:The Most Terrifying Villains Category:Trickster Category:Master Disguiser Category:Psychopaths Category:Abusers Category:Hunters Category:Chaotic Evil Category:Sadists Category:Bullies Category:Charismatic Villains Category:Psychological Abusers